Once again I'm happy to see that people are interested in helping with the Ur transcriptions and that the option for presentation of the scans is overwhelmingly to give the document in its entirety and let you figure it out.

I have now created a site using Omeka and Scripto that allows for basic transcription. I'm currently in the process of testing ( Read more... )

This month's object is a cylinder seal that was giving us trouble, an example of many which have been giving us trouble lately. We are trying to identify all seals from Ur, connect them back to their field records, but it has been challenging. Read about it here.

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Thanks to everyone who took part in the Ur poll. Looks like work with documents in any capacity is the main choice of those polled. After that is helping assign metadata to the documents and/or artifacts (very important since this helps make searches more effective).

I'm trying to get either Scripto or FromThePage running on a server as soon as ( Read more... )

The site of Ur, one of the earliest cities in the world, was jointly excavated by the University of Pennsylvania Museum and the British Museum for 12 years in the early 20th century. Despite many publications on the site, there is still much to learn. And new techniques and technologies mean we can get the data to researchers more efficiently. If, ( Read more... )

My latest artifact of the month post is up at Penn Museum blog. This one centers on a single gold ring, then moves outward to the larger context of that find (with five other rings on one body, as well as much other jewelry and many other bodies with much more jewelry). The context is known as "the Great Death Pit" because there are so many bodies ( Read more... )

Fourth of July in Philly was a good thing, a day filled with friends, if too much heat and sweating.

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Ever wondered what archaeologists do on a typical day? Tons of things.

Read all about it as ~700 archaeologists around the world tell you what they are doing... Right Now (Friday June 29).

www.dayofarchaeology.com

Just pick a category and start reading.

And if you want to see what the first half of my Day of Archaeology has been like, be sure to check ( Read more... )

I've been in London consulting with colleagues at the British Museum for the past few weeks but have finally gotten around to writing my next museum blog entry. I linked this month's object of note in with Neil Gaiman's visit from last month and connected it to the idea of writing and authorship in the ancient world. You can read that entry here.

I ( Read more... )

I just returned from LAWDI, the Linked Ancient World Data Institute at ISAW, the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World in New York City. It was a three day conference in which tech and non-tech people came together to discuss progress in the ideal of sharing archaeological, philological, and geographical data across the web to allow for far- ( Read more... )

I mentioned in my last post that museums were like icebergs, showing only a small portion of their overall material. My friend Kim Leaman, archaeological illustrator extraordinaire, took that statement to heart. Even though she now works mostly at Princeton, she says it's hard to see our Penn building as anything but an iceberg. Of course, being ( Read more... )